CHAPEL HILL — While considering the bothersome slide his North Carolina team is trying to reverse against Virginia, coach Mack Brown recalled a message this week from his time at the helm of Texas.
The Longhorns had lost four straight games to rival Oklahoma, some by blowout margins, and Brown sought the advice of Darrell Royal, the college football legend and all-time winningest coach in Texas program history. Royal was in his 80s then.
“I said, ‘Coach, how do you flip it?’ ” Brown said, remembering the exchange. “ ‘What do you do when you’ve lost to a team and they’re on a streak?’ Because obviously that team gets more confidence and your team starts tightening up trying to win, because it’s talked about year-round.
“And he said, ‘When you’re tired of hearing it and you’re good enough, you’ll fix it.’ And really, that’s true. So I know ours are tired of hearing it, they’ve got to be good enough to go play well.”
Whether the No. 21 Tar Heels (1-1) have heard enough and are good enough to finally solve Virginia (2-0) will be determined Saturday night in a potentially key Atlantic Coast Conference matchup at Kenan Stadium.
It’s only the third week of the season, but already North Carolina’s second Coastal Division game. And the first one became a bumpy ride, with Virginia Tech dropping star quarterback Sam Howell for six sacks and intercepting him three times during the Tar Heels’ frustrating 17-10 loss to open the season.
There’s also the matter of Virginia’s recent grip on the long-running series, which began in 1892 and is called the South’s Oldest Rivalry. The Cavaliers are seeking a fifth consecutive victory against North Carolina. The Tar Heels haven’t beaten Virginia since October 2016, when Larry Fedora was their coach and Mitch Trubisky their quarterback.
“The guys on this team are aware they haven’t beaten Virginia,” Brown said. “Everybody brings it up. They’re on social media, they read, so they know. They know the importance of this game as far as the Coastal’s concerned. I told them it’s important to our program, but at the same time, it’s about us. It’s not about who we play, we’ve got to play better.”
Virginia’s 38-31 defeat of North Carolina in November 2019 marked its last road victory against any opponent. The Cavaliers are just 8-22 in road games under sixth-year coach Bronco Mendenhall.
Last season on Halloween night in Charlottesville, Va., the Tar Heels fell into a 21-point deficit by late in the third quarter, before rallying and nearly completing a shootout-style comeback. Howell threw for 443 yards and four touchdowns, but Virginia held on 44-41.
“We felt like we should’ve won that game,” North Carolina defensive lineman Myles Murphy said, “so we plan to get redemption back this week. We’re playing to win.”
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Here are three more areas worth watching as the Tar Heels tangle with Virginia on Saturday night:
QBs Armstrong, Howell come in hot
Virginia quarterback Brennan Armstrong and North Carolina’s Howell will arrive off eye-popping performances.
The lefty Armstrong enjoyed a career day, hitting on 27 of 36 passes for 405 yards and five touchdowns as the Cavaliers clobbered Illinois 42-14 last week. His completions marked a career high, nine of his passes went for at least 20 yards, and he became the second player in Virginia program history to throw for 400-plus yards and five scores in a game. He’s connecting on 71.6 percent of his passes this season, and the Cavaliers have routed William & Mary and Illinois by a combined score of 85-14.
“He’s just a winner,” Brown said of Armstrong. “He’s tough, he’s smart. He can throw the ball well in the pocket, but he can scramble and make plays down the field as well.”
Meanwhile, Howell finished 21 of 29 passing for 352 yards and three touchdowns through the air — his 10th career college game of at least 300 passing yards — and added a career-high 104 rushing yards on the strength of two touchdown runs in North Carolina’s 59-17 blowout of Georgia State.
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The strong-armed Howell’s 62-yard touchdown scamper produced a career-long run and must-see moment on a night of highlights. He became the first player in Tar Heels program history to pile up more than 350 passing yards and 100 rushing yards in the same game.
PFF College, a service that analyzes data on the 130 bowl subdivision teams in college football, graded Armstrong and Howell as the country’s highest-rated quarterbacks from last week’s games.
“Sam looked like Sam, and got back on track,” Brown said. “We protected him better. He’s doing a really good job with his legs of making plays, and really proud of his performance.”
Howell has thrown for 796 yards and eight touchdowns in two career games against Virginia, but both have ended in losses for North Carolina.
Virginia’s bag of tricks, ‘eye candy’
In addition to Armstrong, three other Virginia players have appeared at quarterback this season, an ever-changing challenge Mendenhall and offensive coordinator Robert Anae present in an effort to distract and confuse opposing defenses.
Keytaon Thompson, backup quarterback Ira Armstead and Jacob Rodriguez also have shared time at quarterback for the Cavaliers. Thompson and Rodriguez, who wear Nos. 99 and 98, respectively, are listed as “football players” on Virginia’s official depth chart, rather than a traditional position such as receiver or running back.
“For the past couple of years, man, Virginia’s always been like that,” Tar Heels defensive end Kaimon Rucker said. “They’ve always been lining up in some funky formations, and just as a defense we’ve just got to lock in. They give us a lot of eye candy, they give us a lot of formations, a lot of different guys in a lot of different places. They’ve got a lot of guys lining up at quarterback and wide receiver and tight ends and all these different scenarios, but really we’ve just got to focus on ourselves as a defense.”
Thompson supplied 109 total yards in Virginia’s season-opening beatdown of William & Mary, and 92 total yards during the defeat of Illinois.
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Through the years, by the numbers
Saturday night’s contest marks the 126th all-time game between North Carolina and Virginia. The teams have met every season since 1919, and there only have been four seasons since 1900 when they didn’t play each other — 1906, 1909 and 1917-18, when football was put on hold at both schools due to World War I.
The Tar Heels and Cavaliers temporarily will become the second-oldest series in NCAA bowl subdivision history on Saturday night, until Auburn and Georgia square off Oct. 9 for the 126th time, moving the two series back into a tie.
A Virginia victory on Saturday night gives the Cavaliers five straight wins against North Carolina for the first time since 1987-91, the end of Dick Crum coaching era in Chapel Hill and the start of Brown’s first stint in charge of the Tar Heels. Brown is just 3-9 against Virginia, with all of those games coming as North Carolina’s coach.
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Brown made it a point to say this week that unranked Virginia should be placed higher in the national polls than the No. 21 Tar Heels.
“Because Virginia’s 2-0 and they’ve dominated both ball games,” he said. “Probably because they didn’t finish as well as they wanted to last year they haven’t been rated as well, but I think there are definitely teams in the Top 25 not as good as Virginia.”
Adam Smith is a sports reporter for the Burlington Times-News and USA TODAY Network. You can reach him by email at asmith@thetimesnews.com or @adam_smithTN on Twitter.
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This article originally appeared on Times-News: ‘Tired of hearing it’: What to watch as UNC seeks to reverse recent curse against Virginia
